Long Absurdly Poems

With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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RESURRECTION OF A HEROE:

CHORUS:

Far from comparison, far from fear.
Failure part of the journey; shed no tears.
Man...do... the best you can do.
Talents in your hand's only for you. 
No body cares...what you goes through;
When you succeed,...

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Godot has arrived
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Alive and well thanks!

...said the haiku poster
Crudely pasted to the fence
Who was too busy selling stolen goods
To notice he was a notice
Announcing a brand new play
A fusion of two classics

Waiting for...

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I used to be obsessed with fashion, caring far too much about clothes,
Like the sun whenever he's coming and going, is striking vanity's pose.

I lavished absurdly upon my wardrobe, in excess of what was practical,
Like...

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I’m laughing this morning, spontaneously. We’re not studying any more. Our sophomore school year is over. I’m giddy, giggling, like a 9 year old on sugar.
I think I just finished the hardest class that I’ll...

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LIGHT VERSE AND NONSENSE VERSE III

The Humpback
by Michael R. Burch

The humpback is a gullet
equipped with snarky fins.
It has a winning smile:
and when it SMILES, it wins
as miles and miles of herring
excite its fearsome grins.
So beware,...

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These are poems about sinking, poems about drowning, poems about loss, and poems about new discoveries we sometimes make while feeling lost...



Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones…
fill all the pockets of...

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These are villanelles by Michael R. Burch and and villanelle-like poems...


Villanelle: Trump’s Retribution Resolution
by Michael R. Burch

My New Year’s resolution?
I require your money and votes,
for *you* are *my* retribution.

May I offer you dark-skinned scapegoats
and bigger...

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The love in her, the hate in war and the unjustly moment in time
Is reality the indefinite cause to forbid and discern The Ancients behind?
Decidedly, I lifted her off the ground and began the loneliest...

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It seems that, more and more, I feel myself being drawn to face the dreaded realization that I am certifiably mentally ill, not just depressed, or anxious, or emotionally exhausted, but deluded, my sensibilities having...

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what brought him to this place
she wants to forget---doesn’t matter,
didn’t matter, because she stood
by her man when it happened &
he had been a great man
on the outside, he had been everything
that she needed & she...

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heard ENOUGH about the debt ceiling yet?
have you been beaten over the head with
FEAR
as a citizen of this american empire that
spreads both its hands (a baton in each)
to pummel all those on this planet 
(with...

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…And the obscurity ever so profound…
Stuffing a new-born with apprehension…
Nebulous prophecies it recites…
As my prospect begins to diminish…

The ravens soaring high above…
As fatality becomes the conqueror…
And he dwells in the deep murk…
When the wolves discard...

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I'm so far gone that I'm telling the truth. It sounds like a foreign language. "Richard Peck"


Each living being has a birth-to-death cycle,
Existence is steered by pulses above our feeble,
Despite our tries, time neither ceases...

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How foolish am I?!?
YEARS beyond our sad end.
Multiple relationships past the
Joy of all that we shared and were,
I doubt I even (fleetingly) enter your mind,
Let alone time the cadence of your heart to mine,
Or polish...

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sigh ...
there is no shortage
of gloom and doom these days
we are in the midst of something unseen in our time
and the fear and hysteria is palpable
that said, I'm not taking the blue pill ... no...

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TIDES   OF   TIDINESS   

If  I was God,  the geographic world I would bless:
I’d start by tidying  up my world map for it’s a mess.
First let’s examine...

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it’s never …

easy …
letting go
saying goodbye
realizing that your path with someone
no longer saunters to
the same sanctum
because you know then
that you’ll never be whole again -
that, whether they recognize it or not
a measure of your marrow
leaves...

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No Worries
The Lord is my shepherd the keeper of all of my hopes and all of my dreams. I hold Him close to my heart and we will never part. His light will always be...

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Alone, I camp below Cathedral Peak – 

God, I know you’re not whom we say you are
and you should have a good case for slander –
What fantastic tales we tell about you; 
I wonder if...

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Oh my god is this 1787,
Was the constitution just written today?
Because the WiFi is down,
And I don’t know what to say,
I’m about to perform a bitch-face frown.

If I were frowning much harder my lips would...

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Once having it fun it crawls back from the shell,
Making decisions a true living hell.
'For every action there is a reaction's,
Always here to take away satisfaction.

Had enough beer, right time to find a dame, 
One...

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Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Paris

( For those who may be interested, this poem by Paul Verlaine presents more difficulties than his other rhymed quatrains I have read, but then this may only...

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(absurdly enough, a true story)

Four centuries ago this year
(believe me, for I’ve checked!)
Britain and Spain jointly adhered
to the Treaty of Utrecht.

They’d been at war so long before,
concerning – of all things –
the British right, as...

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These are important,too:
      Shadows cast by sunlight on the stone fence,
     Steaming sunbeams cutting through the oaks,
     Dappling my forest floor,
 ...

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